Fact-Checking Trump’s West Virginia and Indiana Rallies

“It is nice to the have the facts on your side,” the president said Friday at a campaign rally in West Virginia. He then repeated a number of false or misleading claims about immigrants, Social Security and health care.

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President Trump at rally on Friday in Indianapolis.CreditCreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

“Last year alone, our brave ICE officers arrested — listen to this number — more than 127,000 criminal aliens.”

— at a campaign rally on Friday in Indianapolis

This requires context.

While President Trump’s figure is accurate, it should be noted that most criminal charges against immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were nonviolent.

In the 2017 fiscal year, the agency convicted nearly 106,000 immigrants and charged another 22,000. Of over 500,000 charges or convictions, 288,000, or more than half, were for traffic offenses, drug offenses or immigration violations.

As The New York Times has previously reported, many academic studies have shown that immigration does not drive crime, and immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States.

What Trump Said

“Remember what I said during the debates? Everyone was talking about cutting the Social Security and all — I said we’re not touching your Social Security.”

— at a campaign rally on Friday in Huntington, W.Va.

False.

Although other Republican candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign — like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — proposed raising the retirement age, Mr. Trump is wrong that he was the only candidate to oppose cuts to Social Security.

The Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, called plans to raise the retirement age “theft.”

The Democratic candidates in 2016, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, both proposed expanding Social Security benefits, which Mr. Trump cited in a Republican primary debate early that year.

“The Democrats are doing nothing with Social Security,” he said in March 2016. “They’re leaving it the way it is. In fact, they want to increase it. They want to actually give more.”

Other Claims

Mr. Trump also made a host of other claims during the rallies that The Times has previously debunked: